Arabi Kalyanams return to haunt poor Muslim families in Kerala

Two recent incidents of Gulf nationals vanishing after marrying poor and underage Muslim girls in Kerala's Kozhikode district have brought back the spectre of Arabi Kalyanams (Arab weddings).

In the latest incident, a UAE national abandoned a 17-year-old orphanage inmate within two weeks of marrying her on June 13.

In another case, a Saudi Arabia national disappeared four days after marrying a girl in Nilambur in Malappuram district on August 23.

Both marriages were registered at mosques.

Unconfirmed reports say more than 10 Arabi Kalaynams were held in the past couple of years in Malappuram and Kozhikode districts.

In the first case, 28-year-old Jasem Mohamed Abdulkarim left for the UAE on July 1 without informing the wife and later called her to say he was divorcing her.

Following the girl's complaint that she was forcibly married off and Abdulkarim sexually harassed her, police arrested the absconding man's mother, Sulaika, from Kozhikode, on August 28.

Two other people are believed to have brokered the marriage.

Sulaika said her son divorced the girl after finding out that she was in love with another man.

Interestingly, Sulaika herself is a victim of Arabi Kalyanam held three decades ago and Abdulkarim is her son born out of that marriage.

Though Sulaika was divorced by her Arab husband, he took their son to UAE and brought him up there.

Sulaika later got married again to a man from Kozhikode and they have two children.

However, Abdulkarim always used to visit his mother in Kerala.

It was during one of these visits in June that his mother arranged his marriage to the 17-year-old.

Sulaika and two others have been arrested for violating the Child Marriage (Prohibition) Act.

The girl and her mother, an illiterate vegetable seller, said they were cheated into the marriage by officials of Ciesco Orphanage in Kozhikode where she was an inmate for 12 years.

According to Muslim reformers such as M.N. Karassery, the obscurantist groups that backed the illegal marriage were emboldened by attempts of the state government, in which the Muslim League is the second-largest constituent, to regularise Muslim marriages of even girls aged below 18 through a circular.

But following a public outcry, the circular was shelved.

"I'm surprised why this heinous practice has returned when the state and its Muslim community are not poor anymore. The incidents demolish the myth and prove that large sections continue to wallow in poverty," Karassery said.

The Opposition Left Democratic Front has also slammed the government for not cancelling the orphanage's licence. "It is the Muslim League that protects the (Arabi Kalyanam) brokers," said CPI-M leader P.K. Sreemathi.

According to officials of Ciesco orphanage, which is run by a Muslim organization, the marriage was conducted with the consent of the girl and her mother.

Sulaika also claimed that her son gave many expensive gifts to the girl and they did not know about the law related to marriageable age.

The state government has now asked the Social Welfare Department inquire into the orphanage which has its licence.

Arabi Kalyanam was common in Kerala's northern districts with a sizable Muslim population a decade ago. But it also sowed misery on many poor families.

Barring a few, most of these women were abandoned by their "foreign" husbands a short while after marriage.

However, the practice became near extinct with increased protests, better economic status of the Muslim community and media scrutiny.

Still there are hundreds of Muslim women in Kozhikode and Malappuram, aged between 20 and 80, who have been victims of this practice.

Most of them have children from their former "Arab" husbands although some have got remarried. Most women eked out a miserable existence and brought up children with great difficulty since they never received any financial support nor heard anything from their husbands after they vanished.

Besides Arabi Kalyanam, Mysore Kalyanam or Male kalyanam too was common in the region.

These pertained to visitors from Mysore in Karnataka or from the Maldives marrying local Muslim girls only to return to their state or country after some days leaving their wives alone.